The Museo Romántico, closed for renovation for the last nine years, will open to the public again on December 3rd. I remember it as one of the most charming of Madrid's lesser museums, though its new name - Museo Nacional del Romanticismo - is truly horrible.

The Spanish royalty-collection agency SGAE (pronounced "sky") does not tire of opening itself up to ridicule. Only days after the widespread amusement caused by it trying to charge a Barcelona hairdresser's a monthly fee for having the radio on comes the news that it is targeting the tuna, not the fish but the ensemble of student buskers who dress up in Elizabethan costumes to serenade their audience. "They'll be the death of the tunas. Our performances are not for profit," the President of the National Council of Tunas, Joseba "Canary" Molina, explained to the newspaper Público, "and the payment they are demanding means we lose a lot of money." The lyrics of the tuna standard Clavelitos have been adapted - the flowers are now given from the singers' heart to the "Sky" inspectors.